


Such Nonsense

by penlex



Series: lucky number ones [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Closeted Character, Coming Out, Established Relationship, Fluff, Genderqueer Character, Nonbinary Character, Other, Post-Canon, Romance, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 17:57:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12237831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penlex/pseuds/penlex
Summary: Harry Potter is actually not strange or mysterious at all.





	Such Nonsense

Harry discovers quite by accident that there's not a whole lot that's considered abnormal in the wizarding world. They have their cultural prejudices of course, that couldn't possibly be any more obvious. But in matters of, say, what kind of company you keep, or where, or what name you go by or what clothes you wear while your company is being kept… Wizards couldn't give. Well. They couldn't give a hoot.

Of course there's just one little problem with that: it's not commonplace in the wizarding world to have labels for what kind of company you like to keep, or whether or not certain muggles would use your proper name, or believe that your clothes fit you. The Dursleys obviously had always pretended there were no such thing as any person who kept company with anyone except the opposite sex, or who's name was the one their parents gave them, or who's clothes came off the rack in the rightly labeled section. And with any other muggles or muggleborns that Harry had spent any real time with, there just always happened to be something much more pressing going on at the time.

Now that the war is over, and everyone is as safe - or as relatively safe as one can be in the world, anyway - Harry is left floundering around a little bit, not sure what to do with himself. What he wants to do. What he's  _ allowed  _ to want.

Harry doesn't want to be an Auror anymore, he thinks. But he doesn't have any other ideas, and everyone else seems to have assumed that's what he'll do. He supposes it really must be at least a bit his own fault. He did express the desire once, after all. But he's tired, and he just wants a nice repeat of his sandwich, and maybe a book and a cat.

Harry doesn't want to cut his hair anymore. It's such a silly want, he thinks. Why is that so important to him, a thought he keeps coming back to, that makes him nervouse somehow? There's no particular custom in the wizarding world, Harry has seen plenty, for boys to have short hair. It's perfectly fine and normal, here, for boys to have long hair. But for some reason that doesn't make Harry feel less nervous about growing his, so he keeps it quiet that he wants to for now.

Harry doesn't want to date Ginny anymore(/again?). He feels terrible about it, guilty. He still feels just the same as he ever did for her - protective and captivated and sometimes awed, and in love, he thinks. He thought. No - he knows. Harry loves Ginny. But he feels like he's lying to her still, has been lying to her since all the way back in second year when he promised not to let her get hurt. Nevermind that he never told her anything untrue. He keeps it to himself, avoids her when he can, enjoys being with her despite himself when he can't. He lets her kiss him again, even though he feels-

He feels like such a  _ bad person _ .

Ginny, in typical Ginny fashion, does not tolerate avoidance for long. Harry loves that about her. He knows he does. He loves her. That's the first thing he blurts out when she confronts him, beyond mortified to find her blurring in front of him as his eyes start to fill up, guilty guilty guilty.

"Merlin, Harry," she says. "Of course I know that, you prat." She rolls her eyes, wipes his face, and kisses- his forehead.

"I talked to Hermione before I brought it up with you," Ginny says a little later, after they cuddle and Harry crushes down that stupid guilt in favor of taking in the way she smells, amortentia sweet. "Just in case it was different with muggleborns or something."

"What?" Harry murmurs into her fiery hair, only vaguely curious anymore. He's almost asleep. She's so warm. She's safe now, finally, and she'll keep him safe, and he'll keep her safe too. Safe and warm.

"You're normal, Harry," Ginny tells him softly. The words alone don't sound like the proper answer to his question, but her tone, the way she scritches her stubby nails through the tangles in his hair, it must be. "Everything you want, or don't want, anything you can be, it's all normal."

"Normal," Harry repeats, mumbling now not out of drowsiness but because he's hiding a little bit, in Ginny's arms. But Ginny never has told Harry anything untrue either, and Hermione probably has at least a dozen credible sources to back her up.

So Harry tells the woman he loves all about wanting a sandwich and a book and a cat, and to grow his hair out maybe not as a boy, and to hold her hand and cuddle with her for all his life, and all the other ways he's totally, completely normal.


End file.
